Gathering Stars in a Bucket

I must learn how to collect stars in a bucket

I must feel the Aw-full Presence over broken egg shells

and the rotten beam on my front porch.

So I mop, the vacuum cleaner fell apart,

and there was a puddle of water on my kitchen floor this morning,

A spitting refrigerator to greet me as I broke fast.

“Heaven is here,” she said, “quiet as it’s kept.”

Oh Lord, I thought, I hope not,

having had enough of trying to find God in the laundry, in the library, or in the mall.

Even if I killed all the machines and went on welfare,

I would have to find angels while filling out forms

to prove I am who I say I am

while trying to find out who I am in the Bhagavad Gita.

I must learn to reckon time payments with the Tao

and to feed the insatiable IRS,

while remembering that all fear is desire.

I wonder of the Sisters of Charity would take in a whole family of initiates?

What’s more I can’t even harvest my dreams,

because it is becoming harder and harder to find a garden,

and I am told they are on sale at the superstore.

I look, wandering up and down lanes with quartered legs and breasts on special.

“Heaven is here,” she said, “here”.

Quiet as it’s kept, the mystery clings to things. Here.”

I must learn to gather stars in a bucket.

Linda Beatrice Brown

1983, Revised, 2019